1. Field of the Invention
(1) Physically, the present invention lies in the field of knowledge of physical primarily residential neighborhood design, and relates to a physical arrangement of residential buildings in a defined neighborhood.
(2) Functionally, the origins of and intended outcomes from the present invention span other fields of knowledge. A sweeping review of numerous fields of knowledge in the behavioral sciences gave birth to the present invention. The intended results from the present invention (a) include improved satisfaction of basic human needs and thus enhanced quality of life, and (b) lie squarely in the behavioral sciences.
2. Information Disclosure Statement
(3) The following patents appear to be relevant to the present invention: Finnegan, U.S. Pat. No. 4,007,565, issued Feb. 15, 1977; Jones, U.S. Pat. No. 4,852,313, issued Aug. 1, 1989; and Scizak, U.S. Pat. No. 4,736,556, issued Apr. 12, 1988.
(4) The Finnegan U.S. Pat. No. 4,007,565 patent discloses an arrangement of dwelling modules in a substantially U-shaped configuration about an auto court, and proposed to enhance motor vehicle convenience for a small cluster of patio homes with vehicle patios in the front and small courtyard patios in the rear of housing modules. The xe2x80x9cAbstract of the Disclosurexe2x80x9d of the Finnegan U.S. Pat. No. 4,007,565 patent states: xe2x80x9cA family dwelling-land development arrangement with a high building-to-land area ratio including a dwelling module comprising a plurality of individual and separate and spaced apart single family dwellings disposed in a substantially U-shaped configuration about an auto court with an open end adequate to accommodate passage of automobiles. The module includes a plurality of automobile shelters adjacent said dwellings and opening to the auto court to accommodate automobiles passing through the opening to the interior of the configuration.xe2x80x9d
(5) The Jones U.S. Pat. No. 4,852,313 patent discloses xe2x80x9cA housing arrangement and method for maximizing the number of houses with a line of sight to a view, with the arrangement comprising a plurality of lots arranged side-by-side adjacent a view and along an imaginary arcuate string line which is connectable to other such string lines along an undulating path to define successive peaks closer to the view and valleys farther from the view, so that all lots thereby have a line of sight to the view, with each lot are preferably each characterized by a building perimeter layout or envelope of predetermined configuration and orientation to enable substantially identical buildings to be placed on all of the lots.xe2x80x9d
(6) The Scizak U.S. Pat. No. 4,736,556 patent discloses a housing arrangement of closely clustered houses to take maximum advantage of the sun and provide good buffering from annoyances and disturbances. The xe2x80x9cAbstract of the Disclosurexe2x80x9d of the Scizak U.S. Pat. No. 4,736,556 states: xe2x80x9cA housing arrangement in two columns of lots with a staggered configuration such that all the houses in the lots may face in the same direction so as to take advantage of ambient conditions while simultaneously providing optimum land-use efficiency and privacy for the occupants of every lot in their dwellings and back yards. The configuration of structures also provide numerous advantages such as security, noise buffering, avoidance of visual pollution, convenient access to the back yard, ability to change columnar direction to follow the geographic and physical contours of the area, and ease of placement of utility lines and passive solar devices.xe2x80x9d
(7) Present invention differentiated from three prior patents. Prior patents cited herein reside in the field of building construction either (a) producing physical building outcomes, such as spatial economy of physical building site space (Finnegan U.S. Pat. No. 4,007,565); maximizing solar energy (Scizak U.S. Pat. No. 4,736,556); maximizing the view of other residences from any given residence (Jones U.S. Pat. No. 4,852,313); and optimizing motor vehicle access or traffic (Jones and Scizak Patents) or (b) referring to general behavioral outcomes in the usual manner of the building trades, e.g., xe2x80x9csecurity, . . . avoidance of visual pollution, convenient access to the back yardxe2x80x9d (Scizak patent). To their credit, prior patents cited here do set forth a unique combination of features, which comprises more than a list of features from which builders can pick and choose. Never has there been an invention in the present field of invention to: (a) Clearly list and number a finite set of its specific necessary features; (b) arrange those specific numbered necessary features to produce a unique physical Neighborhood Housing Arrangement; (c) make clear reference to selected findings from disciplines including clinical psychology, social psychology, environmental psychology, sociology, urban planning, behavioral architecture, aesthetics, criminology, and traffic engineering with the expressed intent of predicting behavioral outcomes; (d) uniquely synthesize the physical design with multidisciplinary theory and research to produce a neighborhood arrangement to optimize satisfaction of human needs; (e) provide clearly stated links between the physical design and behaviors relating to human need satisfaction; and (f) supply additional detailed specific lists of ancillary (desirable but not necessary) features of physical, financial, social, and research design features to further characterize and thus help distinguish the present invention as unique.
(9) The following non-patent references appear to be relevant to the present invention:
(10) Coleman, A. (1990) Utopia on trial: Vision and reality in planned housing (2nd ed.). London, England: Hilary Shipman.
(11) Congress for the New Urbanism (2002) Charter of the new Urbanism. San Francisco, Calif.: Congress for the New Urbanism. Retrieved Feb. 26, 2002, from http:/cnu.org/cnu_reports/Charter.pdf
(12) Consumer Reports (1996, May) Neighborhoods reborn. Consumer Reports, 61(5), 24-30.
(13) Creese, W. L. (1966) The search for environment: The garden city: Before and after. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.
(14) Duany, A., and Plater-Zyberk, E. (1992) Towns and town-making principles. New York, N.Y.: Rizzoli International.
(15) Eagleton Institute (1987) Desirability of living in different types of communities. (1987) Eagleton Institute of Politics, Rutgers University, cited in xe2x80x9cOf settlements and subdivisions . . . xe2x80x9d by Harold S. Williams, position paper published by the Rensalaerville Institute. Rensalaerville, N.Y.: Rensalaerville Institute.
(16) Eppli, M. J., and Tu, C. C. (1999) Valuing the new urbanism: The impact of the new urbanism on prices of single-family homes. Washington, D. C.: Urban Land Institute.
(17) Flanders, J. P. (1976) Practical psychology. New York, N.Y.: Harper and Row.
(18) Flanders, J. P. (1982) A general systems approach to loneliness. In L. A. Peplau and D. Perlman (Eds.). (pp.166-179). Loneliness: A sourcebook of current theory, research, and therapy. New York, N.Y.: Wiley-Interscience.
(19) Howard, E. (1898) Garden cities of to-morrow. London, England: Sonnenschein. (Pagination from Faber and Faber 1945 London, England edition)
(20) Jacobs, J, (1961) The death and life of great American cities. New York, N.Y.: Random House.
(21) Katz. P. (1994) The new urbanism: Toward an architecture of community. New York, N.Y.: McGraw-Hill.
(22) Kunstler, J. H. (1996) Home from nowhere. New York, N.Y.: Simon and Schuster.
(23) Miller, J. G. (1978) Living systems. New York, N.Y.: McGraw-Hill.
(24) National Crime Prevention Council (2002) Retrieved Sep. 26, 2000, from http//www. Crime Prevention through Environmental Design NCPC CPTED.htm
(25) Nelessen, A. C. (1994) Visions for a new American dream. Chicago, Ill.: Planners Press.
(26) Newman, O. (1973) Defensible space. New York, N.Y.: Collier-Macmillan.
(27) Newman, O. (1996, April) Creating defensible space. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research. (Contract No. DU100C000005967, Contractor: Center for Urban Policy Research, Rutgers University.), 31-64.
(28) Newsweek (1995) 15 Ways to fix the suburbs. Newsweek (May 15, 1995)
(29) Oldenburg, R. (1989) The great good place: Cafes, coffee shops, community centers, beauty parlors, general stores, bars, hangouts, and how they get you through the day. New York, N.Y.: Paragon House.
(30) Parker, B., and Unwin, R. (1901) The art of building a home. London, England: Longmans, Green and Co.
(31) Perry, C. A. (1929) The neighborhood unit. In Neighborhood and community planning, Regional Survey of New York and its environs, 7, New York, N.Y.: Committee on Regional Plan of New York and Its Environs.
(32) Perry, C. A. (1939) Housing for the machine age. New York, N.Y.: Russell Sage Foundation.
(33) Prince of Wales (1989) A vision of Britain. New York, N.Y.: Doubleday.
(34) Sierra Club (2002) Sprawl: The dark side of the American dream. Retrieved Feb. 22, 2002, from http://www.sierraclub.org/sprawl/report98/report.asp
(35) Unwin, R. (1909) Town planning in practice: An introduction to the art of designing cities and suburbs. London, England: T. Fisher Unwin.
(36) Vermont Forum on Sprawl (2002) Detailed research [on sprawl] Retrieved Mar. 1, 2002 at http://www.vtsprawl.org/index3.htm
(37) Three types of prior art exist in addition to the referenced patents: Village or new urbanism design, sprawl, and neighborhood unit design. Each will be described prior to differentiation from the present invention.
(38) Village or new urbanism design. Village design evolved throughout the ages in the form of vernacular housing built mostly by the residents themselves, presumably to satisfy their needs in the most practical ways. At the dawn of the 20th Century, visionary Ebenezer Howard (1898) founded the Garden City Movement to capture the wisdom and charm of village design. His ideas grew from the 19th Century Arts and Crafts Movement as an alternative to miserable slum living suffered by the factory workers in Britain. Howard aimed to create a Utopian a socialist society, and as architects he chose Sir Raymond Unwin (1909) and Barry Parker (Parker and Unwin, 1901)xe2x80x94and they stole the conceptual show. Unwin and Parker so brilliantly created charming towns and houses; lobbied Garden City features into public housing practices; and led the way toward officially recognized schools of urban planning in Britain, Europe, and the United States, that the original socialist focus for The Garden City Movement was all but forgotten and replaced by Unwin and Parker""s images of picturesque villages. Village or Garden City or traditional or Small Town USA style reigned supreme in Europe and the United States until just after World War II, when sprawl design took over. Beginning in the mid-1980s as a reaction against sprawl design, architects Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk (1992) founded a movement to replace sprawl known as the xe2x80x9cnew urbanismxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cneotraditionalxe2x80x9d design that touted the virtues of and resurrected Garden City design. New urbanist planners have used Raymond Unwin""s major statement, Town Planning in Practice (1909), as their primary design reference. They have founded schools, written extensively, and gained support with both scholars and homebuyers seeking to live in a traditional neighborhood. At the dawn of the 21st Century over 200 new urbanism housing projects were under construction, and many more estimated to be in the planning stages. For consideration in this document, village and new urbanism design will be considered one and the same, because both (a) make general reference to human values and needs and (b) supply lists of design features. Duany and Plater-Zyberk (1992) have defined 13 characteristics of the traditional neighborhood. Newsweek magazine (1995) published 15 ways -to fix the suburbs. Planner Anton Clarence Nelessen (1994) pursued an empirical research approach and developed his principles using his Visual Preference Survey(trademark) technique. In this technique respondents rate pictures he shows to identify preferred arrangements of the built environment. Nelessen (1994) listed ten basic design principles to create small communities actually desired by his research subjects, who invariably preferred village design. The Charter of the Congress for the New Urbanism (2002) was drafted by a who""s who in the new urbanism design community and spelled out 27 specific design features to guide American urban growth. Britain""s Prince Charles of Wales (1989) has vigorously condemned sprawl and propounded his own Ten Design Principles (Prince of Wales, 1989, pp. 75-153) for village or new urbanism design.
(39) Summary list of new urbanism features. All the new urbanism features in the lists cited in the paragraph just preceding can be summarized as follows: (1) The overarching principle: Planned in advance; (2) Has a discernable center such as a square or green; (3) Residences lie within five minute walk of the center; (4) Buildings and residents vary, are not highly homogeneous; (5) Mixed use is allowed and encouraged; (6) Outbuildings are allowed and encouraged; (7) An elementary school is accessible; (8) Playgrounds lie near dwellings; (9) Streets form a connected network; (10) Streets are narrow and pretty; (11) Buildings lie close to the street, so setbacks are small; (12) Parking is to the rear of buildings accessible by alley; (13) Civic buildings lie at the most prominent sites; (14) Neighborhood is to some degree self-governing; (15) Neighborhood lies close to jobs; (16) Neighborhood has an edge; (17) Neighborhood emphasizes pedestrian traffic over vehicle traffic; (18) Neighborhood design emphasizes preserving nature; (19) Lawns are relatively small; (20) Few cul-de-sacs; (21) Design is at human or pedestrian scale, not large scale; (22) Buildings should have some decoration and be pretty; (23) The users of buildings are consulted prior to final design; and (24) Buildings are of American traditional design.
(40) Sprawl designxe2x80x94During World War II, William Levitt perfected highly efficient methods of manufacturing housing with specialized work crews and prefabricated components. After World War II, the combination of new home manufacturing efficiencies and rising availability of the automobile provided the means for millions of Americans to realize the American Dream of their own single family detached house using a vehicle-friendly neighborhood design known universally as suburban sprawl or xe2x80x9csprawlxe2x80x9d for short. As the design for the spectacularly influential Levittown, sprawl has dominated new housing neighborhood arrangements ever since that time, often codified in countless zoning ordinances as the only design permitted. Ever since World War II, sprawl has enjoyed both (a) condemnation by most scholars (e.g., Kunstler, 1996) and (b) commercial domination of the marketplace.
(41) The Sierra Club (2002) definition of sprawl: Sprawl is low-density development beyond the edge of service and employment, which separates where people live from where they shop, work, recreate, and educatexe2x80x94thus requiring cars to move between zones.
(42) Duany and Plater-Zyberk""s characteristics of suburban sprawl: Sprawl is disciplined only by isolated xe2x80x9cpods,xe2x80x9d which are dedicated to single uses such as xe2x80x9cshopping centers,xe2x80x9d xe2x80x9coffice parks,xe2x80x9d and xe2x80x9cresidential clusters.xe2x80x9d All of these are inaccessible from each other except by car. Housing is strictly segregated in large clusters containing units of similar cost, hindering socioeconomic diversity. Sprawl is limited only by the range of the automobile, which easily forms catchments. Areas for retail often require travel exceeding 50 miles. There is a high proportion of cul-de-sacs and looping streets xe2x80x9cdead wormxe2x80x9d design. Through traffic is possible only by means of a few xe2x80x9ccollectorxe2x80x9d streets, which become easily congested. Vehicular traffic controls the scale and form of space with streets being wide and dedicated primarily to the automobile. Parking lots typically dominate the public space. Buildings are often highly articulated, rotated on their lots, and greatly set back from streets. Buildings are thus unable to create spatial definition or sense of place. Civic buildings do not normally receive distinguished sites. Open space is often provided in the form of xe2x80x9cbuffers,xe2x80x9d xe2x80x9cpedestrian ways,xe2x80x9d xe2x80x9cberms,xe2x80x9d and other ill-defined residual spaces.
(43) Researchers studying sprawl in Vermont (Vermont Forum on Sprawl, 2002) defined sprawl as low-density development outside compact urban and village centers along highways and in rural countryside. When asked about what features make up sprawl, citizens reported: commercial development strung out along a highway; increased amount of paved areas; more roads and parking; single family homes spread out on former farm fields; widely spaced development with a scattered appearance; and development that requires an automobile. The researchers in Vermont identified the following characteristics of sprawl: Excessive land consumption by development on unnecessarily large lots that waste productive farm and forest land; low average densities in comparison to existing centers; development that requires an auto for access; fragmented open space; wide gaps between development and a scattered appearance; separation of uses into distinct areas; premature extension of public services to serve the development before other areas are filled; lack of economic and social diversity in residential areas; lack of public spaces and community centers; repetitive, large xe2x80x9cboxxe2x80x9d buildings with no distinctive character; and large paved areasxe2x80x94wide roads, more roads, and large parking areas. The Vermont researchers found the following indicators of presence of sprawl: Scattered residential lots in outlying areas; residential subdivisions on oversized lots near town centers; planned housing developments in outlying areas; commercial strip development; other commercial and industrial areas that have large lots and inefficient layout; and peripheral location of public buildings.
(44) Present invention differentiated from new urbanism and sprawl design prior art. Nothing in the known prior art, either singly or in combination, discloses or suggests the present invention which (a) clearly lists and numbers a finite set of its specific necessary features; (b) arranges those specific numbered necessary features to produce a unique physical Neighborhood Housing Arrangement; (c) makes clear reference to selected findings from disciplines including clinical psychology, social psychology, environmental psychology, sociology, urban planning, behavioral architecture, aesthetics, criminology, and traffic engineering with the expressed intent of predicting behavioral outcomes; (d) uniquely synthesizes the physical design with multidisciplinary theory and research to produce a neighborhood arrangement to optimize satisfaction of human needs; (e) provides clearly stated links between the physical design and behaviors relating to human need satisfaction; and (f) supplies additional detailed specific lists of ancillary (desirable but not necessary) features of physical, financial, social, and research design features to further characterize and thus help distinguish the present invention as unique. In contrast to the present invention, the essence of both new urban and sprawl design is simply specified in lists of features from which builders pick and choose. In contrast to the present invention, new urbanism or sprawl design can result in (this list parallels the earlier list in this paragraph): (a) Employment of any combination of physical design features from a long list; (b) siting the housing in a wide variety of permissible arrangements, not a unique physical housing arrangement; (c) omitting any reference to related scholarly fields of knowledge; (d) omitting any effort to synthesize physical design with multidisciplinary theory and research; (e) omitting any linkages between physical design and behaviors relating to satisfaction of human needs; and (f) failing to include or even mention additional detailed specific lists of ancillary (desirable but not necessary) features of physical, financial, social, and research design. New urbanism and sprawl are fields of design, not a specific design such as the present invention. Other unique housing arrangements which accomplish the first listing (a)-(f) in this paragraph are certainly possible and will hopefully appear over time, but the present invention is the first one.
(45) The neighborhood unit design of Clarence Perry. Planner Clarence Perry wrote a classic paper (Perry, 1929) defining the xe2x80x9cneighborhood unitxe2x80x9d and later updated his thinking in a book (Perry, 1939) Housing for the Machine Age. His neighborhood unit xe2x80x9cconsists of six principlesxe2x80x9d (1939, p. 51): (1) Size to support an elementary school, generally a half mile in diameter at most, (2) boundaries on all sides by arterial streets, (3) open spaces for small parks and recreation of about 10% of the total neighborhood area, (4) institutions such as schools, community centers, and churches grouped around a central point, (5) local shops around the circumference at traffic junctions, and (6) internal street system with lots of cul-de-sacs and street widths sized to facilitate internal traffic and discourage through traffic. Perry intended his hugely influential neighborhood unit to satisfy most needs of residents and bring the advantages of traditional small town living into the city. In actual practice, progress on (a) government regulations needed to implement Perry""s concept and (b) building the acclaimed new town of Radburn, N.J., were both stopped dead in their tracks by the economic catastrophe of the Great Depression and never recovered. A few of Perry""s principles were implemented in British new towns. Since the time of Perry""s seminal writings, his six principles have suffered curious fates, some actually fueling the prevalence of sprawl: (1) School systems and bussing of students spread out so much and change so often that building a neighborhood around schools has become generally unfeasible; (2) Arterial streets have become the central conceptual basis for sprawl; (3) Lax zoning has made the inclusion of open spaces optional, so most sprawl design housing has none or 0%, let alone 10%, of total area in open space; (4) Easy automobile travel and market forces have led to siting of institutions such as schools, community centers, and churches at locations of convenience for vehicle traffic, not pedestrian traffic; (5) Local shops have long since largely given way to much larger shopping centers; and (6) Residential streets in sprawl design almost totally embrace winding cul-de-sac patterns but are zoned so wide as to all but destroy any semblance of Perry""s original concept, even if it has all its five prior principles intact.
(46) Present invention differentiated from Perry""s neighborhood unit. The present invention has a perimeter road that is actually separated from arterial roads outside the Neighborhood Housing Arrangement. The present invention has open space, but it is uniquely situated. Otherwise the present invention has little in common with Perry""s neighborhood unit concept other than Perry""s general intent to better meet human needs. Nothing in the Perry""s neighborhood unit, either singly or in combination, discloses or suggests the present invention which (a) clearly lists and numbers a finite set of its specific necessary features; (b) arranges those specific numbered necessary features to produce a unique physical Neighborhood Housing Arrangement; (c) makes clear reference to selected findings from disciplines including clinical psychology, social psychology, environmental psychology, sociology, urban planning, behavioral architecture, aesthetics, criminology, and traffic engineering with the expressed intent of predicting behavioral outcomes; (d) uniquely synthesizes the physical design with multidisciplinary theory and research to produce a neighborhood arrangement to optimize satisfaction of human needs; (e) provides clearly stated links between the physical design and behaviors relating to human need satisfaction; and (f) supplies additional detailed specific lists of ancillary (desirable but not necessary) features of physical, financial, social, and research design features to further characterize and thus distinguish the present invention as unique.
(47) Housing choices at the dawn of the 21st Century. At the dawn of the 21st Century, most residents who wish to maximize quality of life by living in a healthy neighborhood surrounded by beauty face severely and frustratingly limited choices. On the one hand, most people in the U.S. report on surveys (Eagleton Institute, 1987) they would prefer to live in a small town versus any other arrangement, and they rate village photographs desirable and photographs of sprawl as undesirable (Nelessen, 1994). On the other hand, housing choices remain dominated by sprawl design. Homebuyers who can afford it increasingly choose new urbanism design and pay 11% in actual sales price (Eppli and Tu, 1999). With about with 200 new urbanism design projects under construction (Eppli and Tu, 1999), new urbanism design is available only in relatively few and upscale neighborhoods-out of reach of the average homebuyer (Consumer Reports, 1996).
(48) Optimizing versus maximizing satisfaction of human needs. To understand the present invention one needs to note the important distinction between xe2x80x9coptimizingxe2x80x9d and xe2x80x9cmaximizingxe2x80x9d of human needs. Optimizing means best overall need satisfaction. Maximizing means the very highest level of satisfaction. Optimizing usually requires getting a high but not the highest possible satisfaction for a set or combination of needs. For example, if safety need satisfaction were maximized, residence buildings in a neighborhood might be surrounded by moats and tall electrified barbed wire fences, but satisfaction of needs for socialization with neighbors as well as need for peace and beauty would suffer. Therefore, the overall optimizing of needs in the present invention necessarily refers to the joint outcome upon satisfying a set or combination of human needs: Safety, privacy, peace and beauty, and socialization (Flanders, 1976, Ch.5).
(49) A Neighborhood Housing Arrangement to maximize the quality of life by optimizing the satisfaction of basic human needs for safety, privacy, peace and beauty, and socialization within household members and between members of different households throughout the neighborhood by encircling the neighborhood with a perimeter road; blocks of residence buildings to have a substantially U-shaped configuration; blocks of residence buildings placed so as to back up to adjoin the perimeter road with the opening of their U-shape facing inward away from the perimeter road; a plurality of residence buildings to be designed for elderly residents to guarantee a viable presence of three generations of residents; every residence to enfront a semiprivate space such as front porch, deck, balcony, yard, or garden; one block containing the neighborhood center with neighborhood park and a wholesome hangout or gathering building such as general store, coffee house, or soda shop; the undeveloped land to remain in fields; and residence and other buildings to have vehicle access from the rear by either the perimeter road or smaller back streets so residence buildings face a neighborhood interior with no roads or vehicles but rather consisting of parks, fields, sidewalks, and other pedestrian and neighborhood amenities.